Sunday Shorts

Half-Minute Horrors

Edited by Susan Rich

2009, Harper

www.authortracker.com

Very short (most are a page or less) “scary” stories for kids.  Some are definitely scary, some are odd, some leave you scratching your head, some are in comic book/graphic novel form. All are written by famous authors, some well-known to children, some well-known to adults.  It’s fun to see what some of your favorite authors can do with very few words and such a subject.   Margaret Atwood, Michael Connelly, Neil Gaiman, Gloria Whelan, Jerry Spinelli, Lemony Snicket and Adam Rex  are just a few that contributed.

I picked out two that I will probably use with my fourth graders.

“At the Water’s Edge” (page 57) by Ayelet Waldman.  This has great descriptive writing, and I plan to read almost the entire story to them, but stop after, “Except the car door is opening and …..” and have them think, then write their own ending.  After we share and discuss, I’ll read the real ending aloud.  The whole thing is really quite spooky…..

    I include it here, in its entirety, to give a sampling of the writing in this book:

    " The water is still, and so clear I can see the tangled stems of the lily pads leading down to the muddy bottom.  I have made a careful study of the lilies, their white outer leaves that shade to pale pink and finally to magenta.  The pistils are bright orange, the color of the dress my mother was wearing when she left for work this morning, only a few minutes before the children came.  I am paying such close attention to the blossoms floating in the pond because I don’t want to look at the children.  The pond is small, and they have surrounded it entirely.  They stand very still, staring at me.  I think they don’t even blink, but since I try to avoid their eyes, I cannot really tell.  They don’t say a word.
     It has been hours since they first burst through doors and crawled through windows, silent all the while, even when they snatched my little sister from her crib and bundled her away.  My mother should be home by now.
     They have never once spoken, or shouted, even when I managed to tear loose from their filthy hands and race out to the pond.  They chased me, their fingers brushing the edges of my clothes.  I leaped into the canoe and paddled out to the middle of the pond, a smart thing to do, it turned out, since it seems they cannot swim.  But the pond is shallow, and soon enough they’ll figure out that they can wade.  Already I see on or two of them testing the water with their dirt-encrusted toes.
     I hear the noise of an engine, and only now do I allow myself to burst into tears.  My mother is home – her car is coming up the driveway.  She will chase them away.  Except the door is opening and…..
 …….it is not my mother who is stepping out.  It is one of the children, dirty and disheveled, with torn clothes and bare feet.  I am staring at the child who has replaced my mother, and there is no air left in my lungs.  The child lifts her hand and waves.
     It will be dark soon."

And “On a Tuesday During That Time of Year” (page 102) by Chris Raschka.  Again, I will stop and have them write their own ending before sharing with them Mr. Raschka’s version.

     "On a Tuesday during that time of year when it is particularly unpleasant to be out in the early gray twilight of those sometimes rainy or even sleety days, a small boy, perhaps nine or ten years old, was looking in his deep sock drawer for a particular pair of warm ones that he saved for just this sort of morning.  He dug past his long basketball socks, pushed aside his black dress socks, and held for a minute a pair of red-and-blue –striped socks that he had once wore to a party.  Plunging his hand back into the spaghetti bowl of stockings, he felt and pinched everything, with his eyes closed, to test if it was that wonderful soft and homey wool of the pair he was looking for.
     Figuring that they were perhaps in the laundry, he was about to give up when he touched……
 …….something hard, lumpy, and, he thought,, a little bit hairy.   Curious, he curled his fingers around whatever it was and slowly pulled it up, the layers of socks tumbling this way and that, until when he opened his hand he found something gray-green, longish – about five inches – and thin, scabby, with little hillocks crowned by short black hairs, very wrinkled, and with what looked like withered corn husk protruding from its end.
     It was a finger."

Sunday Shorts

Too Much Happiness - Alice Munro
2009, Random House Audio
10 unabridged cds/ total listening 11.5 hours
read by Kimberly Farr and Arthur Morey
303 pages

 

I’ve never been one for short stories, but even though these stories are depressing and dark, they are mesmerizing and I seem to be hooked on them.  The reader (since I’m listening to the audio edition) might add to that- she reads really smoothly.  Haven't listened to any with the male reader yet.  The following synopses probably contain spoilers.  I want to remember the stories myself, so I've chosen to include them.  

1-“Dimensions”  Dori, still in her teens, married an orderly that took care of her dying mother.  He was much older, and quite controlling.  They had three kids in rapid succession, but he was crazy. One evening he became upset with her…..and killed the children.  The story takes place two years later, and follows Dori as she goes to visit Lloyd in prison, something she can’t stop herself from doing. When he tells her that he sees the children in heaven – and happy – it looks like her life will add a tiny hue of grayness to the black that it has become. Or at least that’s the take I get on it.

2-“Fiction” Joyce and her carpenter husband, John, separate after many married years when he falls for his much-younger apprentice.  Years later, Joyce meets up with the interloper’s daughter who had also been one of her music students.  She has become an author, writing a short story about their relationship as teacher and student – which bring up the question –does everyone  remember the past in the same way? 

3 – “Wenlock Edge” Told in the first person, a girl leaves home to go to college, where she has a roommate named Nina.  Nina has an arrangement with elderly Mr. Purvis.  When the narrator, at Nina’s urging, goes for dinner with him one night, she discovers she is to be completely naked. She complies.  There is nothing sexual that happens, but when she returns to her apartment she discovers Nina has disappeared.  She has gone to live with Ernie Botts, a character that the narrator had gone to dinner with a few times at the beginning of the story….

4- “Deep-Holes” Sally and Alex raise three children, but the focus of this story is the eldest, whose life changes after he falls into a chasm and breaks both legs.  He is nine at the time.  Extremely intelligent, but never receiving any positives from his father, he drops out of college, and then disappears completely.  Years later a brief meeting with his mother leaves her unsettled.  It left me unsettled – in a good, thoughtful way. 

Sunday Shorts

Goodreads has a meme called Sunday Shorts - you read short stories (from anywhere --books, magazines, internet site, free Kindle downloads), then write a little about them.  Short stories have never been my forte, so I'm going to try to read a few, at least for the summer.....

So I've started with Ghosts of Chicago by John McNally, written in 2008. 

The first story is titled "Return Policy," and it was really offbeat and I liked it a lot.  After being married for 18 years, Mark Timber's wife has left him.  So he decides it's only right to return every single wedding gift they received.  There's an element of loneliness ... aloneness .... that really struck a chord with me.  Everyone treats grief and sadness differently, and the things Mark chooses to do come from a deep place in himself.  I'm looking forward to more!